Machine learning of pair-contact process with diffusion

TL;DR

This study employs machine learning techniques to analyze the pair-contact process with diffusion (PCPD), revealing that its phase transition characteristics depend on diffusion rate and may represent a new universality class.

Contribution

The paper introduces combined unsupervised and supervised machine learning methods to analyze PCPD, providing new insights into its phase transition and critical exponents.

Findings

Unsupervised learning effectively clusters configurations and estimates thresholds.

The spatial correlation exponent varies continuously with diffusion rate.

Results suggest PCPD may belong to a new universality class.

Abstract

The pair-contact process with diffusion (PCPD), a generalized model of the ordinary pair-contact process (PCP) without diffusion, exhibits a continuous absorbing phase transition. Unlike the PCP, whose nature of phase transition is clearly classified into the directed percolation (DP) universality class, the model of PCPD has been controversially discussed since its infancy. To our best knowledge, there is so far no consensus on whether the phase transition of the PCPD falls into the unknown university classes or else conveys a new kind of non-equilibrium phase transition. In this paper, both unsupervised and supervised learning are employed to study the PCPD with scrutiny. Firstly, two unsupervised learning methods, principal component analysis (PCA) and autoencoder, are taken. Our results show that both methods can cluster the original configurations of the model and provide reasonable estimates of thresholds. Therefore, no matter whether the non-equilibrium lattice model is a random process of unitary (for instance the DP) or binary (for instance the PCP), or whether it contains the diffusion motion of particles, unsupervised leaning can capture the essential, hidden information. Beyond that, supervised learning is also applied to learning the PCPD at different diffusion rates. We proposed a more accurate numerical method to determine the spatial correlation exponent $\nu_{\perp}$, which, to a large degree, avoids the uncertainty of data collapses through naked eyes. Our extensive calculations reveal that $\nu_{\perp}$ of PCPD depends continuously on the diffusion rate $D$, which supports the viewpoint that the PCPD may lead to a new type of absorbing phase transition.